TWITL – week thirty-six – when the short week feels long

So I’ve decided that I’m going to write during the week and see what sticks to me for the weekend post. Here’s what I wrote this week…

Henry Cavill as Geralt in The Witcher

Full disclosure– I am a big Henry Cavill fan. Wait, that’s not quite a surprise, is it? No, I think not. Still, I think it bears mentioning as I plod along with my thoughts on his casting as Geralt in The Witcher series coming to Netflix. I adore Henry Cavill. I believe he is a good actor. He’s made me laugh, he’s made me cry, and he’s made me want to just drink in his presence at every opportunity. He sounds like he could be a Listworthy, right? He’s too popular to be one of my Listworthy fellas but he’s pretty much in league with them affection-wise. He’s been in my head since he was in Man of Steel. And he’s been the man in plenty of my stories since then.

So second full disclosure– I knew nothing about The Witcher books or video games. Now I know a little (yah for Wikipedia!). I am going to read the books (I’m not much of a gamer) just so that I can know about this world of The Witcher. Will I imagine a version of Henry Cavill as the character? Probably. Or not. I’ve seen enough pictures of what the character looks like to keep Henry out of it. I’ve already read a sample and I want to read more.

From the little I’ve read online, I know fans of The Witcher are divided on this casting. People have an image in their heads of Geralt and they can’t fit Henry into that image. I totally understand. Some people question his acting ability. Some think he’s too “bulky.” Others just flat out don’t want Henry as Geralt. I haven’t really followed who was a frontrunner in the minds of fans but Henry apparently wasn’t it. Will the fans of the books and games give this series a chance? I hope they do. If they want to disparage it at least they can do it after experiencing it. Will Henry’s casting draw in new fans to The Witcher? In my case, yes.

Maybe after I read the books, I’ll wonder if Henry was the right call for Geralt. Even though I adore him, I have thoughts on what kind of characters I’d like to see him play. Maybe I’ll think he’s not right for the character. But knowing he’s a fan of that world means that he will do his very best to bring Geralt to life. And yes, I’ll be there to watch…

Stepping Away from Social Media

Oh no, not me. I like my Instagram and Twitter too much to deactivate and Facebook is the way I keep track of family. I have no plans to deactivate my social media but I absolutely understand why some people have given up on any or all social media.

Twitter is probably the most toxic of all the social media. It allows people to be absolute scum of the earth even as it allows others to shine. The problem these days is that people tweet things and for some reason some of it becomes “news” with little fact checking and the like. The bright lights and laughter are so easily drowned out by the deluge of utter crap. And lo if you are actually the target of all that crap. How soul sucking it must be? And what about the people actually spewing the crap. How bad is their life that they’ll direct their hate towards someone they don’t know?

So I get why some people have left Twitter. It’s easy for me to float along. I don’t have a huge followers list. The people I follow are mostly easy to read. Some of them get carried away spreading the horror and I’ve taken steps to keep my twitter sanity by doing the following:

Turn off Retweets – This is the first thing I do when I notice that someone I follow seems to RT stuff I don’t want to read. If I wanted to read the stuff they constantly RT, then I’ll follow the people/brands/news that report on such stuff. I don’t mind the occasional RT that actually educates but when it starts to get out of control, I’ll turn off retweets.

Mute the profile – When I mute a profile, it’s really the first step towards getting unfollowed by me. It’s the easy way to stay on their followers count without actually unfollowing. Maybe I’ll unmute the profile later. Or maybe I’ll look at my following count and start to unfollow from the muted ones if I haven’t cared enough to check them out on my own.

Mute Words – Maybe someone keeps on mentioning something or someone I want to avoid (spoilers of shows, celebs I don’t like). I’ve just recently started using this method to avoid reading about a particular country singer I don’t like. (I just don’t see the appeal of this particular singer and seeing his face or name in my timeline because I follow other country artists just irritates me.)

Unfollow – I’ve unfollowed people for a couple of reasons— they’re no longer tweeting, I don’t find them interesting anymore (sometimes I’ll watch a show and follow a lot of the people in the show then the show ends and I’m not too interested in the actors). I’m trying to keeping my following list under 1000 accounts followed. I’m currently just under 900 and would love to delete more.

Block – I mostly block fake accounts, way too political accounts (both left and right), and people who’ve blocked me. I don’t like to block accounts and it has in recent days become an irritant because some people I follow quote tweet people I block. It’s maddening! Oh well.

Why do I keep my social media profiles? Well, the best reason is I’ve been lucky enough to get my first and second profile name choices (kiari on Instagram and Facebook, walelia on Twitter). I don’t want anyone else to have those names. I’m not a celebrity or a brand so for the most part, I’m not bothered by trolls and the like. I can go along and just be myself, which includes refraining from posting without much thought. I post to express myself, to share bits of my life. I also post to record moments in my life for me to glance back upon in later days. As much as I like the replies and likes, it’s not the main reason I tweet or post pictures or post updates. I understand the toxicity of social media but I work on keeping my timelines interesting and tailored to my interests. It’s not say that I don’t appreciate differing opinions because I do. But when it gets too far right or too far left and for far too long, I start to prune the timeline. And on my end, I try to post things brighter than not because if anyone actually reads my stuff, I want them to smile than not…

Oh dexter, sorry for your Netflix fail

I have more than my fair share of email addresses. I’m weird like that. And I use a lot of them (and some I don’t) for various things, like buying stuff or personal stuff or “professional” stuff or secret stuff. Sometimes people use my email address to sign up for stuff and the most recent one was someone called “dexter” using my email address for his Netflix account.

At first I didn’t care. I get a lot of junk mail in that account and who cares if someone used my email address to start their Netflix membership? Then I started to try and clean up that particular email account and the emails from Netflix began to irritate me. Who was this “dexter” and why was he using my email address?! Everytime dexter made a change to his account (like setting up profiles for children), I’d get an email. It finally got to me so here’s what happened:

I changed the password

I logged into the account

I checked out the account information

I clicked on the deactive link

The account will deactivate at the end of the billing cycle on September 29